


i got a heart (but i don't got a soul)

by tempolarriefics



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angel/Demon Relationship, Childhood Friends, Demon/Human Relationships, Enemies to Lovers, Famous Harry, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Non-Famous Louis Tomlinson, Temporary Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:53:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26628592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempolarriefics/pseuds/tempolarriefics
Summary: “We’re soulmates.”Louis’ eyes flick from the tattoo back to Harry’s face, where his eyes are shining with excitement. Louis wonders if he is supposed to feel excited, too. He’s supposed to feel something, surely, besides his usual bitterness for Harry. He thinks back to how Lottie had described meeting Sam, how she had known in her heart that he was meant for her even before he said his phrase.He can’t help but wonder if he would be feeling differently if he hadn’t gone and sold his soul.Or, the one where louis sells his soul before meeting his soulmate, harry is a popstar with a heart of gold, niall is inadvertently responsible for harry's boners, liam is a meddling angel, and zayn is a demon who made a mistake
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, Sam Prince & Lottie Tomlinson, Zayn Malik/Liam Payne
Comments: 43
Kudos: 255
Collections: 1D Mythical Fic Fest





	i got a heart (but i don't got a soul)

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: This fic mentions Jay's death, includes Felicite's death (with a twist), and contains two quips regarding COVID-19. I don't mean to make light of any of these things, but I found that they fit the story well. If reading about these will make you uncomfortable, this might not be the fic for you.
> 
> Thank you to [Lorina](https://harryeatsburger.tumblr.com/) for the endless cheerleading and to [Nikee](https://beelou.tumblr.com/) for being the most patient, attentive, and encouraging mod I've ever worked with.

_Twenty Years Ago_

“What about ‘cherry kiwi watermelon’?” Harry asks, rolling over in the grass.

Louis laughs, leaping from the swing and landing in a heap nearby. “Don’t make your phrase all fruit,” he tells him as he rolls over to where Harry is. “It’s got to be something weird. Something that no one would normally ever say.”

“No one is going to say that, are they?” Harry grins, dimples indenting his cheeks.

“Maybe if they’re reading off their grocery list, H,” Louis jokes. “Do something like ‘dinosaur rockstar flies to the moon’!”

Harry throws his head back, shaking his hair out and smiling. “That’s cool now – but imagine being older! You don’t even have a chance to meet your soulmate ‘til you’re eighteen. Are you really gonna say that at eighteen and feel cool?”

Louis frowns, scrunching up his nose. “I guess not. But how am I s’posed to know what I’ll think is cool in ten years?”

“Dunno,” Harry shrugs his shoulders up to his ears. “Bet you’ll still think I’m cool.”

Louis grabs Harry’s hand, tugging it away from where Harry had been tearing at the grass under them to squeeze it softly. “’Course I’ll think you’re cool.” He says it easily, because he wholeheartedly believes it; because he can’t possibly know how far he is from the truth. “But I can’t very well make my phrase ‘Harry Styles is cool,’ now can I?”

“Well, you could...” Harry says with a bright smile.

Louis laughs, teasing, “Right, I could! Because no one else would say that.”

“Heyyy,” Harry pouts, but his eyes are still shining happily.

“Nah, just kidding,” Louis assures him, giggling. “You’re gonna be proper famous someday. Loads of people will think you’re cool.”

“You think so?” Harry asks, eyes wide and hopeful.

“I know so,” Louis answers confidently.

And that, at least, he is right about.

-

_Present Day_

It’s a seemingly perfect September morning on the day that Louis sells his soul. The sun is bright and shining, the air crisp and cool, and soon his whole family will be together to celebrate his younger sister Lottie’s big news.

The Tomlinson-Deakin’s are a large family, so gathering all together is a feat not to be taken lightly. Louis had flown in from LA just the other day, Lottie herself had come back from a trip to Greece, and his other younger sister Felicite would be driving back from London sometime today. His other siblings, Daisy, Phoebe, Doris, and Ernest, are all young enough that they are still living at home with Mark, their stepdad - though he is currently at work, having taken an early shift so that he can have the afternoon and evening off to celebrate with the family.

After all, they’ve got lots to celebrate. Lottie has found her soulmate.

“Tell us again how it happened!” Daisy begs excitedly.

“Yes! Won’t you tell us again, pleeeease?” Phoebe backs up her twin, dragging out the last word pleadingly.

“Again?” Lottie teases, tucking a lock of blonde hair behind her ear and exchanging a radiant smile with Sam, the guest of honor, sitting next to her. “I’ve told it loads of times already.”

“And you’ll tell it loads more,” Louis says, chuckling.

“It’s just so romantic,” Phoebe says with a dreamy sigh.

Daisy nods in eager agreement.

“Well, if you insist,” Lottie says, feigning nonchalance.

Maybe if they weren’t all so close, they wouldn’t see right through her act. As it is, they all know she is loving every bit of the attention. No one minds, though. Phoebe and Daisy lean forwards onto the table, pushing aside their empty plates from brunch to make room.

“So, I was in Greece,” Lottie begins. “My team had wrapped our last pop-up shop earlier that day and we were all supposed to fly home the next morning.”

Lottie works in make-up product development and advertising, so she had been travelling to promote the launch of her team’s latest lipstick. Make-up is not something that Louis is particularly interested in or will ever pretend to understand, but he wholeheartedly supports her passion for it.

“Since it was our last night, we treated ourselves to dinner as a reward for a job well done. It was the loveliest little restaurant, right on the waterfront with the most spectacular ambience and view.”

Daisy and Phoebe are practically swooning in their seats already. Even Doris and Ernest, who are much younger, have looked up from where they were playing with their building blocks to listen to Lottie. Louis turns his attention back to her as well, watching with a proud smile as she continues.

“The host said whatever his phrase is and sat us down, and then our waiter approached. Let me tell you,” Lottie says, fanning herself for effect, “not only was this waiter the most handsome man I’d ever seen, but he only had eyes for me. Somewhere in our hearts, I think we knew even before he even said the words: undercooked candle beanbag puree.”

Sam’s face looks a little flushed with embarrassment, but no one at the table is judging him for his phrase. After all, they’ve heard it hundreds of times, ever since Lottie turned eighteen and the words appeared inked on her inner wrist. It’s customary to have a unique, strange catchphrase that you use when meeting strangers for the first time. If everyone said “hello” to greet each other when they first met, like they used to according to the history books, there would be a mess of people with the word “hello” tattooed on them, providing no real clues as to who their soulmate is.

Louis turns over his arm to look down at his own tattoo. His soulmate’s first words to him don’t follow this convention. Rather than a distinctive phrase on his arm, there is just one word: “oops!” Louis has often wondered about how he will meet his soulmate. Something will have to happen for someone to abandon their catchphrase in favour of a simple “oops”. Perhaps his soulmate will run into him, or drop something, or trip and fall into his arms. Since his phrase is such a short one, Louis is extra attentive when he first meets someone.

Lottie beams at Sam, pressing a quick kiss to his reddened cheek. Daisy and Phoebe fawn over them, gushing about how romantic it is and how they can’t wait until they’re old enough for their own tattoos to appear.

In that moment, everything is perfect. Louis’ biggest worry is how he doesn’t want his twin sisters to grow up too quickly and how much he has left to organize for Lottie’s celebratory family dinner tonight. But then, the phone rings.

“I’ll get it,” Lottie says brightly, giving Sam’s shoulder a squeeze as she stands. Motioning to the dirty dishes on the table, she calls over her shoulder, “Will you girls start on the washing up?”

Daisy and Phoebe don’t complain at all, which is a testament to how special this day is for Lottie. Usually they would put up more of a fight over why they’re the ones expected to wash the dishes.

Louis turns his attention to Sam, trying to think of a good question to ask him that will break the ice and allow them to get to know each other better without seeming intimidating. After all, he is Lottie’s older brother.

But before Louis can open his mouth, Lottie comes back into view, the house landline held up against her ear. She looks shaken, her blue eyes wide and watery. She has been glowing ever since she arrived with Sam, but that radiance is suddenly absent.

“Louis, will you take this?” she asks, sounding near tears. She hands the phone to him without waiting for his response and then rushes into the kitchen where Daisy and Phoebe are.

Louis frowns, gesturing to Sam to go after Lottie as he lifts the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

Dimly, he is aware of Sam getting up to check on Lottie. A moment later, all four of them file out of the kitchen with somber expressions, gathering Ernest and Doris and beginning to put on coats and shoes.

But acutely, all Louis is able to process are the words being spoken on the other end of the line. “Hi, I’m calling from Chelsea and Westminster Hospital regarding a Ms. Felicite Tomlinson.”

“That’s my younger sister,” Louis breathes.

“She was brought in after suffering a heart attack and is currently in critical condition. Our best doctors are operating on her right now.”

Time slows. Louis feels frozen, as if someone dumped a bucket of ice water over his head and then socked him in the gut until he was no longer capable of movement.

A heart attack? Fizzy is far too young to be having a heart attack.

“Will she be okay?” Louis manages to ask, his voice cracking on the last word.

“Her condition is critical, Mr. Tomlinson, but I assure you that we are doing our best.”

“Right,” Louis says, willing the shock and fear that has flooded his system to fade enough for him to form a coherent thought. He blinks rapidly, then shakes his head. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

He meets Lottie’s gaze after he hangs up the phone, the same worry and panic he feels reflected back at him. Somehow, seeing his younger siblings all standing by the door allows him to hang on to his last shred of clarity for a bit longer. He needs to be strong, for them.

“Let’s go,” Louis says firmly, nodding at Lottie. “We can take the van, c’mon now.”

Lottie hesitates as Daisy and Phoebe carry Ernest and Doris outside. “Are you sure we should all go?” she asks. “I could stay here with the babies if that would be better.”

Louis shakes his head, trying very hard not to think about the last time his entire family was piled into the van, speeding to the hospital. It was Fizzy with them instead of Sam, but otherwise it all feels eerily similar. He wonders if Lottie has noticed, too, how much this moment feels like when they got the call that their mum had died.

“I think we should all be there,” Louis tells her honestly, “but if you and Sam want to drive separate, you can.”

“No,” Lottie says quickly, “let’s not waste time worrying about that. Let’s just go.”

Louis agrees, calling out to Daisy and Phoebe to hurry up and figure out which one of them wants to sit shotgun. Usually they’d be arguing over whose turn it was, but today neither of them seems to want the seat.

“Where are we going?” Doris asks from the backseat, where she and Ernest are already buckled in. Louis has a hard time remembering that she and Ernest aren’t babies anymore. At five years old, she can definitely tell that something isn’t right.

“Fizzy is sick,” Louis explains gently. “We’re going to visit her at the doctor.”

“Sick like mummy was?” Ernest asks. He doesn’t sound sad or scared, just curious.

Louis, on the other hand, feels his stomach flip at the thought. They can’t lose Fizzy, too. They _can’t_. He falters, his heart caught in his throat at the possibility.

“It’s a different sickness,” Lottie answers for him. “But it’s serious. The doctors are going to tell us all about it when we get there.”

That answer satisfies the youngest twins, but not the older pair. Louis sees them exchange a scared glance, and wishes he had more answers.

“Lottie,” Louis calls out before more questions can be brought up, “will you call Mark? Tell him to meet us at the hospital when he can.”

As Lottie pulls up Mark’s contact, the car falls quiet save for the voice of Louis’ navigation app. Even after she finishes talking to Mark and hangs up, the car is filled with a somber silence.

The quiet should make the drive feel long, but to Louis everything is a blur. He focuses on driving as fast as he dares while still being safe, weaving through traffic when he is able and speeding through yellow lights rather than slowing down. It’s good that they arrive quickly, but it also feels too quick. Louis isn’t ready. He doubts that any of them are.

Still, he puts on a brave face and hurries his siblings out of the car.

The hospital is just as he remembers, impassive and bustling. The waiting room is grim, cushioned chairs filled with tense loved ones, anxiously waiting for news.

“Go sit down somewhere, okay?” Louis tells them. “I’ll ask for an update and let them know that we’re here.”

-

“Unimpressed mineral musketeer bought a bonsai tree,” the woman at the front desk says her phrase, followed by a cheerful, “how can I help you?”

Louis shakes his head at her. It’s a far cry from ‘oops’. They’re definitely not soulmates. “I’m here for Felicite Tomlinson?”

“Tomlinson,” she repeats, flipping through some files in front of her, “let me see.”

“Thanks,” Louis nods, barely refraining from bouncing on his toes impatiently.

The receptionist finds the folder that she was looking for, flips it open, and pauses. “Oh,” she says, blinking. It’s a fraction of a second, but her face drops into something like pity. She covers it instantly, an empty smile on her lips as she says politely, “Got it. I’ll make a note that you’re here, and a doctor will be out shortly to update you.”

Louis feels the world slowly begin to spin around him. He wants to snap at her, to demand that she tells him what she knows. It was only for a split second, but he saw the look on her face. She knows something, and it’s not good.

“Is she alive at least?” Louis asks, desperate to hear the answer ‘yes’.

“I’m afraid I can’t give you any details about Ms. Tomlinson’s status right now,” the receptionist says, truly looking apologetic.

It sounds an awful lot like a ‘no’. Louis’ mind races through various scenarios – after all, is it such a _detail_ to know whether a patient is even alive still?

Numb, Louis stumbles back to where his family is sitting, the six of them squished into half that number of chairs.

Lottie’s head snaps up from where she was looking at her phone, her blue eyes piercing. “Any news?”

Louis swallows hard, shaking his head. “No,” he says, truthfully.

Maybe he’s just being paranoid, and projecting his worst fears. Maybe the receptionist had been upset about something else. It’s not worth worrying anyone else over yet, that’s all he knows.

Lottie presses her lips together, brows furrowing.

There isn’t another seat available near them, nor one that he could easily drag over. Phoebe is already sitting on the floor, and Louis doesn’t particularly want to join her there. Plus, he is beginning to feel claustrophobic, too cramped and shut in by everything. He wants to tear his hair out, scream, and cry, not sit quietly in an uncomfortable chair and wait.

“I’m going to get some air,” he says, jerking a thumb towards the door.

“Okay,” Lottie says, “I’ll call you if we get any updates.”

Louis nods gratefully. He doesn’t want to leave his family alone right now, but he also needs to be strong to get them through this. If he is going to be the one holding it together later, when they get what Louis’ fears will be bad news, he needs some space to let himself fall apart for now.

There is a row of benches outside the hospital, separated by planters of bright flowers. The floral arrangements look too cheerful for Louis’ liking. He decides to take a walk instead, heading through the parking lot along the side of the building. As he walks, he tries to clear his head, take deep breaths, and come to terms with the possibility of Fizzy not making it through this. It’s a lot.

So when he reaches the end of the long hospital building to find a secluded alleyway, Louis ducks into it. He leans his back against the wall and tugs harshly at his hair, tears threatening to spill over.

At least if Fizzy dies, she won’t be alone. It’s the only silver lining that Louis can think of, though calling it that leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. His mum had passed away after a battle with cancer two years ago. If there is such a thing as heaven, his mum is there and she will welcome Fizzy with open arms.

Louis thinks back to when his mum had died, remembering the overwhelming grief that had weighed on their family. They still haven’t fully recovered from the loss, and certainly aren’t equipped to take on another. Louis feels the same way that he did then – wishing there was something, anything that he could do.

Plus, Fizzy is so young. Louis remembers being eighteen. He was young and free, his future and his dreams glimmering ahead of him. What about Fizzy’s future? What about her dreams?

“ _The day that they took you, I wished it was me instead_ ,” a melodic voice sings softly, the lyrics from a song that Louis himself had written when his mum died.

“What did you say?” Louis snaps, turning sharply to see that a stranger has joined him in the alley. Louis swallows hard. He had never released that song. It was too raw still, too personal. He always said that he would, in the hopes that it would help others, but he hasn’t found the courage yet.

The man who has joined him is leaning against the wall a short distance away from Louis, dressed in black skinny jeans and a leather jacket. Unbothered, he pulls a cigarette from where it had been tucked behind his ear, places it between his lips, and lights it. “Want a smoke?” he offers.

"Sorry, who are you?” Louis asks, scrubbing the back of his wrist hastily over his eyes.

The man turns to face Louis, blowing out rings of smoke before giving him a sharp grin. “Call me Zayn.” Their eyes meet, and for a moment Louis swears that the hazel color of his irises flickers into total blackness.

Blinking to clear his vision, Louis looks closer at Zayn. He has dark hair, which is messy but somehow looks effortlessly chic as if this casual windswept look is a hairstyle to be worn on a runway. That probably has something to do with the general look of a model that he exudes, with cheekbones that rival Louis’ own if not put them to shame.

“So, Louis,” Zayn says, with a wicked grin of delight at the surprise on Louis’ face when Zayn uses his name without being told what it is. “How would you like to bring your sister back to life?”

Louis gapes at the man in front of him, confused and defensive. “My sister is still alive,” he says, with more conviction than he feels. “And she’s going to be fine.”

“You’re sure about that?” The look on Zayn’s face clearly suggests he thinks otherwise.

“Why do you even care?” Louis demands, ignoring the doubt blooming within him. “Who are you?”

“Someone who can help,” Zayn replies with an assured smile followed by a less assured glance over his shoulder.

Louis follows his gaze, just in time to see a man with wavy brown hair and thick rimmed glasses duck behind a car. “And who is that?”

“Someone who doesn’t think I’m helping,” Zayn says. “But let’s have you be the judge of that, eh?”

Louis raises his eyebrows.

“I’m going to make you an offer,” Zayn says, lifting his cigarette to his lips before continuing, “and you can either take it or leave it. If you turn me down, there won’t be any consequences. But this is a one-time deal – whatever you choose, you can’t change your mind later.”

Louis narrows his eyes at Zayn. “Listen, mate, I don’t really have time for games. I’m sort of going through something right now, which you clearly know already.”

“This isn’t a game. I’ll show you,” Zayn says, extending a hand.

Against his better judgment, Louis takes it.

-

Louis has never been inside an operating room before, at least not that he remembers. And he thinks he would remember, because it is absolute chaos. There is a swarm of doctors in the room, all dressed in scrubs and shouting various things to each other, none of which Louis really understands.

“What are we doing here?” Louis whispers to Zayn. “We shouldn’t be in here. We’re not sterile.”

The corner of Zayn’s lips twitch upwards, but otherwise he gives no indication that he has heard Louis.

“And you _definitely_ can’t be smoking in here,” Louis adds, giving the cigarette in Zayn’s free hand a dirty look.

“Shut up and pay attention,” Zayn hisses back.

Louis looks up, starting to step to the side as a doctor rushes towards him. But Zayn doesn’t budge, still holding onto his hand and keeping him anchored in place. Instead, the doctor rushes _through_ him, passing through him and continuing towards the door as if Louis wasn’t even there.

Louis frowns at Zayn in confusion. “What the-”

“We’re losing her,” a doctor’s voice interrupts, urgent, followed by jargon that Louis can’t follow. The other doctors understand, the tension in the room rising as they visibly rush to help.

“Fizzy,” Louis whispers, finally able to see the patient closely. He would recognize his sister anywhere, her features so similar to their mum’s that it hurts to look at her sometimes. Her face is expressionless and pale, as she is unconscious on the table. Louis wishes he could reach out and take her hand in his, but he can’t even see her hand with how the doctors are gathered around her body, working to save her.

“She’s coding!” another doctor yells out, accompanied by the steady tone of one of the monitors which had been displaying her vitals.

“No, no, no!” Louis shouts, but no one sees or hears him except for Zayn.

“This was about ten minutes before we talked,” Zayn says calmly, when he notices that Louis is seconds away from throttling him.

“Time of death, 11:54,” a doctor announces grimly, and the bustling energy of the room falls flat.

“This isn’t real,” Louis tells Zayn, tears running down his cheeks. “It’s not.”

“C’mon, this is our man,” Zayn says, tugging Louis along as they follow one of the younger doctors out of the room.

The doctor washes up, does some paperwork, then puts on his lab coat and heads out to the waiting area. Louis and Zayn follow.

“Zayn...” Louis says warningly, heart clenching as he sees his family in the waiting area, just how he had left them.

“Mondragon always wins over monk house. Who is here for Felicite Tomlinson?” the doctor calls out, and all six of them jerk up, scrambling clumsily to their feet.

“Wait, wait, I have to call Louis!” Lottie begs, fumbling for her phone, hands trembling. She misses Louis’ contact on her phone twice before Sam gently extracts it from her hands.

“I’ll call him. You go talk to the doctor,” Sam says, and Louis feels a vibration in his pocket a moment later.

“I can’t answer,” he says to Zayn, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “It won’t let me.”

“Ah, well, that makes sense. We’re a bit separated from the world right now,” Zayn says, as if that explains anything. “Don’t worry, time seems to be passing but we’ll return to the same moment that we left. You’ll get the call.”

Louis gives Zayn a distrustful look, but doesn’t press further.

“I’m so sorry,” the doctor is saying when Louis refocuses on the conversation. “Felicite suffered from a myocardial infarction, also known as a heart attack. Very unusual at her age, but potentially triggered by drug usage. We attempted an emergency heart surgery to save her, but unfortunately we weren’t able to. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

Daisy all but crumples to the floor, burying her head in her hands. Phoebe follows suit, wrapping her arms tightly around her twin. Lottie stumbles backwards in shock, where Sam catches her and hugs her tight. Ernest and Doris start wailing, crying loudly although Louis suspects they don’t fully understand what has happened.

“Did you get to Louis?” Lottie is asking Sam through sobs. “We need him.”

“Zayn,” Louis begs, pulling on Zayn’s arm. There are fresh tears spilling over his eyelids as well. “Zayn, I have to go to them.”

“Or you could stop this,” Zayn says, his eyes wide and serious. “I could save Felicite for you.”

“What do you mean?” Louis asks, urgent. He would do anything to save Fizzy.

Zayn squeezes his hand, and the world fades into darkness. When Louis comes back to consciousness, he is back in the operating room, surrounded again by bustling doctors. This time, he looks closely at the patient straight away. It’s Fizzy.

A doctor rushes towards him, then through him, and just like the first time, it’s as if Louis isn’t there.

“We’re losing her,” a doctor’s voice cuts through the chaos, and the level of action in the room spikes.

The monitor displaying Fizzy’s vitals begins to emit a continuous tone.

“She’s coding!” another doctor yells.

But this time, the doctor’s attempts to resuscitate Fizzy succeed. The monitor begins to beep steadily with her heartbeats and the doctors collectively breathe a sigh of relief.

Louis feels his own heart swelling with hope. “She’ll live?” he asks Zayn desperately.

Zayn shrugs. “That’s what I’m offering.”

-

The next thing Louis knows, he is back in the alleyway with Zayn. The first thing he does is check his phone – no missed calls, and it’s only 11:40AM.

“How did you do that?” he demands.

Zayn gives him a dark smile. “I took an offer, a long time ago, similar to the one you’re about to take.”

“I don’t understand,” Louis says, shaking his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpses the brown-haired man from before creeping closer to them.

“I’m a demon,” Zayn says simply, without a trace of remorse in his tone. He raises his eyebrows at Louis’ dumbfounded expression, smirking. “Sold my soul in exchange for my sister’s happiness. Saved her soulmate’s life, that.”

“Really?” Louis asks, eyes wide.

Zayn shrugs. “There’s worse things people have sold their souls for. I would know, I’ve carried out the transactions. Money, fame, you name it.”

“Wow,” Louis says quietly, furrowing his brow as he thinks it over. “So if I sell you my soul, you’ll save Fizzy’s life, and I’ll become like you?”

“When you die, you’ll become like me,” Zayn corrects. “You’d be sort of a demon in training in the meanwhile.”

“A demon in training?” Louis asks, crinkling his nose. “What the fuck is that?”

“Ever heard of a guardian angel?” Zayn asks. When Louis nods, he continues, “Like that, except a demon.”

“A guardian demon?” Louis asks dubiously.

“That’s the gist of it, yeah.” A mischievous grin steals across Zayn’s face. “Those are the good days, when you’re just causing one person trouble instead of trying to take as many souls as you can. Getting souls is hard work.”

Louis raises his eyebrows, amused. “So what you’re doing right now, you mean?”

“Right, right,” Zayn shakes his head, chuckling. “I’ve gotten ahead of myself. But I like you, and I want you to know what you’re getting into before you sell your soul. I think you’ll do it no matter what, to be honest, so I might as well be upfront about it.”

Louis pauses, as if he is thinking it over. But Zayn is right. This is an opportunity to save Fizzy, and Louis wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t take it. “I’ll do it.”

Zayn’s smile sharpens, his eyes glinting in the light. This time, Louis is certain of it when he watches Zayn’s irises turn black. Zayn pulls what looks like a dagger out of his pantleg, cupping his palm around it and cutting just far enough into his hand to draw blood.

“We’ll have to shake on it,” Zayn explains, holding out the dagger to Louis.

Louis swallows hard, taking the weapon from him and holding it against his own palm.

“It gets easier with practice,” Zayn jokes.

Louis makes a face, steeling himself as he presses the blade into his hand until he sees red.

“That was good,” Zayn encourages, his voice uncannily reassuring.

“Of course you’d say that,” Louis snaps. “You’re in the middle of successfully convincing me to sell you my soul.”

Zayn laughs, takes the dagger back from Louis, and holds out his bleeding hand. “Shake on it if you’re sure then. And like I said, if you don’t want to, I’ll back off and you’ll never hear from me again.”

“Yeah, and Fizzy will be dead,” Louis gripes. He intends for it to be biting, but it probably just sounds sad.

Louis grabs Zayn’s hand with his own, gasping as he feels the connection between them lock. It’s as if something is flowing out of him and into Zayn through their open wounds. It rushes past his ears, courses through his veins, tingles along his nerves. Then, all of a sudden, the whirlwind stops.

His soul is gone.

Louis feels woozy. He feels sick. He feels numb. He feels... empty.

“Oh my god,” Louis gasps out, staggering back against the wall and slumping into it.

“Sorry.” Zayn’s apology is halfhearted at best, made even less sincere by the extremely pleased look on his face. He rattles off carelessly, “Side effects may include dizziness, nausea, lack of empathy, lack of emotion, asshole behavior, and feeling generally soulless.”

“You’re terrible,” Louis grumbles, closing his eyes to stop the world from spinning around him.

“What, did you think I was a _nice_ demon?” Zayn scoffs, sounding amused.

Louis flips him off weakly. When he musters the strength to open his eyes again, the world has at least stopped spinning. Still, he feels like there is a gaping hole where his heart used to be, a chunk of ice where there was once warmth and love.

Then, he begins to feel a soft tingling sensation. It takes him a moment to realize that it’s actually just the vibrate of his phone signaling a call.

“It’s Lottie,” he says, a vague feeling of nervousness settling in his stomach.

Zayn looks unsurprised, which Louis supposes makes sense. He doesn’t have time to think about that, though.

“Louis!” Lottie’s voice comes through the line when he answers, sounding breathless. “Louis, the doctors were able to save her! She’s out of surgery now and we’ll be able to see her soon. Louis, she’s going to be okay! They did it!”

Louis looks at Zayn in awe, a smile slowly spreading on his face. “You did it,” he says to Zayn, stunned. He feels what must be a wave of relief and happiness, but it’s dimmed to contentedness rather than true excitement.

“Louis?” Lottie asks, sounding confused. “Louis, you have to come with us to see her! Get back here as soon as you can.”

“Right, right,” Louis says, realizing belatedly how flat he sounds and struggling to force some enthusiasm into his voice. “I’m right outside. I’ll be right in! That’s great news!”

He hangs up before Lottie can interrogate him for his weird behavior, wrinkling his nose at himself.

Zayn is laughing at him, sucking on his cigarette. “You’ll get used to it,” Zayn tells him confidently. “Anyways,” he pushes himself off the wall, dropping his cigarette to the ground and stubbing it out with his toe. “Filthy habit,” he comments to himself.

“What, smoking? Yeah, it’ll kill you, mate,” Louis agrees.

Zayn smiles. “No, putting it out. I’m supposed to be leaving a trail of havoc in my wake, remember? Besides, I’m already dead. These lungs aren’t going anywhere. In fact, I’m not sure they’re corporeal.” Zayn snaps his fingers, and the cigarette on the ground relights itself, as if it had never been snubbed out.

Louis blinks. “I’m in way over my head, aren’t I?”

“You’ll catch on,” Zayn says, waving a hand at him. “Pleasure doing business with you, and welcome to the club.”

And then he’s gone, leaving nothing but a slowly burning cigarette in his wake.

Louis stares at the empty space in front of him for a moment, not entirely convinced that what had just happened was real.

As Louis stands there dumbfounded, the man who had been watching them earlier jogs over. He’s wearing a jumper, sweatpants, and a bright smile. When he reaches Louis, he comes to a stop just where Zayn was standing moments before, and very deliberately stamps out the cigarette. “I’m sorry to hear about your soul,” he says.

“You’re what?” Louis splutters.

But the man has also vanished, leaving Louis standing in the alley alone, thoroughly confused. He can put off figuring out what just happened, though. For now, he has a sister to welcome back to the land of the living.

-

The Tomlinson-Deakin family dinner in celebration of Lottie finding her soulmate turns out quite different than they had originally planned, but it’s a happy occasion nonetheless. Instead of a homemade meal with everyone gathered together at the house, it’s their entire family crammed into Felicite’s hospital room, eating takeout from Lottie’s favourite Italian restaurant.

Louis feels the happiness in the room more than he feels happy himself, but it’s nice. They’ve brought as many chairs as the nurses would allow them to, and someone’s phone has been set up to play love songs in the background. Lottie has retold her story of first meeting Sam twice more already, and Mark is half-jokingly interrogating Sam himself. Of course, they’re all paying close attention to Fizzy, doting on her and making sure she’s comfortable.

Louis wonders if anyone else has a sense of just how close they were to losing her today.

“Hey,” Lottie says softly, having managed to duck out of the center of attention for a moment, “are you okay?”

Louis forces his lips upwards into a smile, nodding. “Yeah, yeah, of course,” he answers. “Fizzy’s alright, you’ve found Sam... what more could I want?”

Lottie shrugs, tilting her head to the side. “You just seem a little off, that’s all.”

Louis looks away, his gaze wandering to where Fizzy is laughing as Daisy and Phoebe toss pieces of garlic bread for Ernest and Doris to try catching in their mouths. If it weren’t for the hospital bed, hospital gown, and IV tubes hooked into her arms, you wouldn’t know that she had nearly died today. When he focuses on just her face, on her laugh, it’s as if nothing has happened.

Lottie puts her hand over Louis’ squeezing gently. “She’s okay,” she says, following Louis’ gaze to Fizzy. “I was scared, too, but she’s okay.”

Louis’ mind flashes back to being inside the operating room, watching his sister die on the table in front of his eyes. He shakes his head to clear it. “I thought we were going to lose her.”

“But we didn’t,” Lottie reminds him.

Louis nods. “I guess I’m just shaken, still. I’ll get over it, especially once we get to take her home and she’s fully recovered.”

Lottie smiles warmly, squeezes his hand one last time, then jumps in to save Sam from Mark’s endless stream of questions.

Louis watches them fondly, knowing how happy this night would otherwise make him, and somehow not able to feel it.

-

Over the next few months, Louis adjusts. He learns how to drum up his emotions when the situation requires it - how to fake smiles that crinkle his eyes happily without feeling happiness, how to laugh loudly and joyously without feeling joy. He learns how to add warmth to his voice when his words would otherwise fall flat, how to stop himself from being an asshole when he gets the impulse for no reason. Louis has sold his soul, but he can’t let anyone find that out.

He thinks most of his family would understand and would even have done the same if given the opportunity. But Fizzy would feel awful, would blame herself, and secrets don’t do well in the Tomlinson-Deakin household. It’s nearly impossible to keep anything from anyone, especially once you’ve gone and started sharing the secret with select members. So, no one can know. Because Fizzy can’t know.

Louis is so preoccupied with how selling his soul affects his family, that it doesn’t occur to him there’s one other person he should keep in mind.

-

“Guess who we saw at the store,” Lottie complains, holding the door open with her foot as she and Sam enter the house, arms full of groceries.

Louis gets up from the couch to help her with the bags, raising an eyebrow at her tone. From the kitchen, the window over the sink gives a decent view of the house next to theirs. Sure enough, he sees two familiar figures unloading their own groceries from the car in the driveway. “Well it is the holidays,” Louis notes. “I’m not surprised they’re back.”

“Ugh,” Lottie heaves a sigh, glaring at Louis. “You’re so calm all the time now. Nothing seems to rile you up anymore, but I bet if you’d run into Harry and Gemma Styles in the store, you’d be upset, too.”

Louis shrugs. If he had his normal range of emotions, she’d surely be right. He and Harry had been childhood best friends, having grown up next door. In the exact same fashion, Lottie and Gemma had been best friends. Their mums, Jay and Anne, had also been best friends. There was a point in time at which it felt like they were all one big family.

Over the years, they had all grown apart. Harry had made it big in the music industry, whereas Louis was still finding his footing. Louis had been too proud to ask for Harry’s help, and Harry hadn’t offered it. Gradually, they stopped video calling, then stopped texting, then stopped making an effort to see one another when they were back home. The final wedge between them had been when Jay passed away. Jay had practically been a mother to Harry and Gemma, too, but neither of them came to the funeral and the only condolences they offered came in the form of flowers from their mother, who had tacked their names on the accompanying card.

Louis isn’t angry about it anymore, but he has never forgiven them for it either.

“Well, hopefully you won’t have to run into them again,” Louis tells Lottie, who loudly voices her agreement.

-

“Got a present for you,” says a voice that sounds an awful lot like Zayn, which is odd considering that last Louis checked, he was out walking his dog alone.

Louis turns just in time to catch a book that Zayn has tossed to him, nearly dropping Clifford’s leash in the process. He wants to tell Zayn off for almost causing him to lose Clifford, but he knows Zayn’s answer would just be something about how he is supposed to wreak havoc wherever he goes. So, he flips the book over in his hands to look at the title: _So You Made a Deal with the Devil_.

Louis grins. He is home for the holidays and staying indefinitely since his time in LA hasn't been as successful as he had hoped. It had seemed like a wise decision at the time to leave LA – he would save on rent, regroup at home, then try the music industry again once he had some new material. But now that he is home, Louis misses his busy life in the city. He can only pass so much time watching TV, playing with his siblings, and walking Clifford. So, he’s eager to learn from Zayn. It’s the most emotion he has felt in a while.

“Sick,” Louis says. “Training starts today?”

“Sort of,” Zayn replies. “You’ll start reading today. There’s power growing within you already, where your soul used to be. I’m just going to show you how to unlock it.”

“There’s magic powers already in me?” Louis asks, surprised.

Zayn makes a face. “Evil powers, not magic.”

“Kind of sounds like the same thing to me,” Louis says with a shrug.

“Well, I’ll teach you the difference later,” Zayn says. “For now, let’s start by picking the person that you want to shadow.”

“The person that I’ll be a guardian demon for?” Louis asks. “Causing them trouble and tormenting them with my powers?”

“With your very limited powers, yes.” Zayn nods. “If you don’t want to pick, I’ll just choose someone random. But usually it’s easier for you to learn how to use your powers if you’re practicing on someone that you already dislike.”

Louis hums thoughtfully, running through some names in his mind. There are plenty of people who have snubbed him in industry who he would gladly cause trouble for. But his dislike towards any of them pales in comparison to a certain someone. From where they are, he can see the Styles’ house just around the corner. “Harry Styles.”

“As in, that Harry Styles?” Zayn asks, raising his eyebrows and tilting his head towards where Harry and Gemma are gleefully throwing snowballs at each other like they’re teenagers.

“Yeah,” Louis confirms. “Is there a problem? I hate him.”

Zayn considers him for a moment, then squints back at where Harry is. “It’s usually easier to learn on someone who’s like, a total douchebag of a human.”

“He is a total douchebag of a human,” Louis says, frowning. His mum had loved Harry like a second son, and he couldn’t even be bothered to call when she died.

“His soul looks really pure, that’s all,” Zayn explains, still looking closely at Harry. “But I guess it doesn’t matter. Your soul was really pure, too, before I sucked it out of you. Maybe when you become a full demon, you can get his. The purer the soul, the more street cred you get, you know?”

Louis doesn’t know, but he nods anyways.

“Cool, I’ll set it up,” Zayn says. “In the meanwhile, you get reading. I’ll know if you don’t. And don’t talk to Harry.”

Louis gives Zayn a mock salute just before he vanishes, leaving a suddenly frantic Clifford in his wake.

“Not cool, Z!” Louis shouts as he tries to calm Clifford down, knowing full well that Zayn is pleased at even this small amount of trouble he has caused. “Not cool.”

-

Louis has no problem with either of Zayn’s instructions. At least, so he thinks. He is more than happy to start reading about his powers and would never want to interact with Harry anyways.

After a morning of reading, Louis is starting to understand how things work. He won’t have magic powers in the sense that his magic can do anything, but he will have a sort of negative influence on the universe that he can direct how he likes. He will first learn to cause bad luck, then bring about minor inconveniences, and eventually he will be able to make any negative outcome he wants happen.

Feeling cooped up after reading, Louis heads outside to get some air. There’s a fresh layer of snow from the night before, adding to the pile on their driveway. Louis lets Clifford run around in the yard and gets a shovel to start clearing it.

Louis is about halfway done shoveling snow when he hears footsteps coming down the path between their house and the Styles’. He resolutely ignores the sound. If it’s Anne, she’ll say hi to get his attention. If it’s Harry or Gemma, they’ll keep walking and he’ll pretend he didn’t even notice they came by.

He is right about this plan, of course, but what he hadn’t accounted for was Harry’s inexplicable choice to wear Chelsea boots out in the snow. There is a yelp followed by a thud, some skidding noises, and then Louis is toppled over from where he was kneeling. He lands on his back with Harry on top of him, cold and breathless.

“Oops,” Harry says. His face is red, though whether he’s actually blushing or it’s just from the freezing weather is hard to tell. It’s weird, having Harry’s face so close to his own after so many years apart. He has changed a lot since Louis last saw him, and even since he last googled him. His hair, which Louis remembers grown out to nearly his shoulders, is now cut shorter, and there’s a shadow of a beard and mustache on his face as well. His eyes are the same as always, though, and looking into them brings Louis back to the time before they started to resent each other. It’s a shame that after becoming famous, Harry also became such an asshole.

“Hi,” Louis says curtly. Ice water is seeping into his jumper and pants, plus Harry is still sprawled on top of him all too close and all too familiar. “Get the fuck off of me already, would you?”

Harry doesn’t move. He’s gaping at Louis, looking surprised and excited. “Louis,” he says, and one of the worst things about Harry has always been how slow he is to get his words out. Ice water is soaking through Louis’ clothes, and Harry Styles can’t even form a fucking sentence. “How old were we, the last time we spoke?”

Louis rolls his eyes, feeling annoyed even as part of him relishes in the fact that he is experiencing any feelings at all. Perhaps Lottie was right. “Before all that fame got into your head, I reckon,” Louis bites out scathingly, fueled by the way the pleased expression on Harry’s face falters. “So, sixteen? Seventeen? Dunno. Does it matter? Get _off_.”

Fortunately, Harry obliges, scrambling off of Louis and extending a hand to help him up as well. “It does matter,” Harry says meaningfully, not letting go of Louis’ hand even after Louis is standing on his own two feet again. “Younger than eighteen, innit?”

Louis snatches his hand away from Harry, ready to snap at him to get to the fucking point already when he realizes what Harry is getting at. _Oops_ , Harry’s first word to him since they both turned eighteen and found themselves marked with what would be their soulmate’s first words to them. No, no, no. Harry Styles _cannot_ be his soulmate. He would rather be paired with anyone else.

“I’d always wondered who would ever start off by saying ‘hi’ to me, you know?” Harry says, taking off his thick, brand-name coat despite the cold.

“Um,” Louis says, stepping backwards as Harry begins to unbutton his shirt.

“Look,” Harry says eagerly, shrugging his silky shirt down his shoulder just enough for Louis to see where the word ‘hi’ is inked at the top of his arm, “we’re soulmates.”

Louis’ eyes flick from the tattoo back to Harry’s face, where his eyes are shining with excitement. Louis wonders if he is supposed to feel excited, too. He’s supposed to feel something, surely, besides his usual bitterness for Harry. He thinks back to how Lottie had described meeting Sam, how she had known in her heart that he was meant for her even before he said his phrase.

He can’t help but wonder if he would be feeling differently if he hadn’t gone and sold his soul.

And right, _soul_ mates. Of course that’s why he doesn’t feel any sort of connection to Harry. He doesn’t have a soul anymore.

“We’re not soulmates,” Louis says flatly. He raises an eyebrow, daring Harry to challenge him.

“What did I say to you?” Harry asks, looking thoughtful. “It wasn’t my phrase – didn't occur to me to say it. I think it was ‘oops,’ right? When I fell. You don’t have ‘oops’ tattooed on you as your soulmark?”

Perks of selling your soul include no longer feeling guilty when you lie. “Nope,” Louis says dismissively, shaking his head. “Hi is a common word, Harry.”

“Right, but not as a _first_ word, not anymore,” Harry insists. “I’ve been paying attention, ever since I got my soulmark. People say ‘hi,’ but only after they’ve said their phrase. But you said ‘hi’ as the first thing you’ve said to me since we turned eighteen. You're my soulmate. You have to be.”

“But you don’t feel anything, do you?” Louis asks, both out of curiosity and to make his point. “If we were soulmates, we should be feeling some sort of bond or connection. Sparks flying, hearts racing, whatever. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel anything.”

Harry frowns, disappointed. “I guess not.”

Louis notices that he feels slightly disappointed, too. It’s probably just because he had romanticized the idea of soulmates when he was younger, daydreaming about the day he would meet the one who was destined to be with him. He had imagined them accidentally bumping into him, causing him to fall into their arms, and then saying, “Oops.” But instead, what he got was his least favourite person on earth, Harry fucking Styles, slipping on his fancy shoes in the snow.

“How long are you home for?” Harry asks.

Louis blinks at him for a moment. He hadn’t expected small talk. He had expected for Harry to saunter away in his overpriced, impractical outfit and never talk to him again. “Uh, a while,” Louis answers. When Harry doesn’t say anything, he adds, “I haven’t had much luck with music in LA, so I’m home until I can get back in the game.”

“My world tour is starting soon,” Harry says.

Louis rolls his eyes. “Sure, rub it in,” he mutters.

Harry shakes his head quickly. “No, no, that’s not what I meant. Sorry, that must have sounded rude. I just wanted to say that I’m still looking for someone to open. So if you wanted...” Harry trails off, shrugging.

Louis can’t think of anything he would want less than joining the Harry Styles’ circus, giving him a glowing introduction in city after city. Louis makes a face. “I don’t want your charity, Harry.”

Harry scuffs a foot in the snow, looking uncertain. “Well, think on it and get back to me, yeah?”

Louis raises an eyebrow. “What, has no one ever told you ‘no’ before?”

Harry’s eyes widen. Somehow, Louis wouldn’t be surprised if it was true. Anne had always spoiled Harry a little, and before he was fully grown he had already skyrocketed to fame.

“Alright, well I’m going to change,” Louis says when Harry doesn’t reply. He thinks his past self would have called out something like ‘good luck with tour,’ but Louis can’t be bothered to care. He whistles to Clifford who, bless him, nearly barrels Harry down in his haste to come to Louis.

“Offer stands, if you change your mind,” Harry says, turning to continue down the path. He stumbles, catches himself, then flashes Louis a pleased grin as if Louis should be proud of him for not faceplanting this time.

Louis hates him.

-

“You should go on tour with him.”

Louis chokes on air, coughing for a moment before turning to give Zayn a withering glare, and not because he is smoking. “What?”

“You'll need to be around him in order to cause the most trouble possible,” Zayn explains. “This is the perfect excuse. And to think, I was going to cause a global pandemic to cancel his tour so that you could torment him from next door. Ah, well. This is better anyways, because you’ll hate it.” Zayn grins, then adds with a wink, “And it will help your career, but of course I don’t care about that.”

Louis groans. “Let’s pick someone else,” he urges. “You said it could be someone random who’s an asshole.”

Zayn shakes his head. “You’d hate being around the person, no matter who I chose. That’s kind of the whole point.”

“You should pick someone else anyways,” Louis argues. “He’s my soulmate. That could cause problems.”

Zayn dips his head, acknowledging the point. “It would seem weird on paper to have you paired with your soulmate. But paperwork is useless torture in Hell, so I don’t think anyone will notice. Plus, you don’t have a soul anymore, so I don’t really see how it’s an issue.”

“Zayn, please?” Louis asks, not above begging.

“You said he doesn’t even know that you’re soulmates. I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Zayn assures him before adding appreciatively, “Plus, what a great start you’re off to at tormenting him. I mean, his soulmate will be right under his nose, but with absolutely no feelings for him. That’s cruel.”

Louis groans. “How am I going to explain this to Lottie?”

Zayn arches an eyebrow. “You think I’m worried about how this causes trouble for you?” he asks. “This is what I live for.”

“You’re not even alive,” Louis grumbles.

Zayn shrugs, cheerful.

-

So that’s how Louis finds himself standing on the Styles’ front porch, his siblings all watching out the window from his own house next door.

He had told them about the run in with Harry, including how Louis had pretended they weren’t soulmates even though it had turned out that they were. He said that he did it because he hates Harry, and that’s why he declined the offer to open for him on tour, too. But the more he thought about it, opening for Harry would be a good opportunity for his career and a chance to get to know his soulmate.

“But you felt it, right?” Lottie had asked. “You felt that it was him?”

Louis doesn’t know what that means, doesn’t know what that feels like. But he had nodded nonetheless.

There’s an awful lot of lying involved in becoming a demon, but Louis supposes he shouldn’t be surprised by that.

His siblings were all supportive and had insisted that he go talk to Harry right away. He might find someone else for the opening, they said. After all, he is Harry Styles. Louis grimaces just thinking about it.

“Louis?” None other than Harry Styles himself opens the door, looking confused. “Are you here for Anne? She just went out to the shops.”

“No, I’m here for you actually,” Louis says.

Harry looks smug about it. “Oh, really?”

Louis barely refrains from scowling. Instead, he closes his eyes, takes a moment to collect himself, and then opens them again. “I was hoping to open for you on your tour, if you’ll have me.”

Harry is smiling widely by the time he gets the sentence out, dimples etched into his cheeks. “I knew you’d come around.”

Louis bites his tongue. Harry’s confidence is annoying, like he was sure that Louis wouldn’t be able to turn down his offer. Louis would reject Harry Styles a million times if it meant it would wipe that cocky smirk off his face. But Zayn had insisted that he make this work, and apparently Zayn’s backup plan involves killing millions of people with a pandemic, so.

“I’ll have my assistant, Niall, send you the paperwork,” Harry says. “Did you want to come in? We could catch up.”

Louis makes a face. What do they have to catch up on? Oh, maybe how Louis’ mum had died and Harry hadn’t shown an ounce of sympathy. “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Louis says coldly. “I’ll work it out with your assistant.”

Then, with as much dignity as he can manage, he hightails it back to his house, to tell his eagerly awaiting siblings all about how conceited Harry fucking Styles is.

-

Harry’s assistant, on the other hand, is awesome.

Niall comes over to get a contract and non-disclosure agreement signed, and ends up staying for dinner and drinks. He’s smart, witty, funny, and can easily drink Louis under the table. Louis might also like him because he practices the first move that Zayn has showed him – causing bad luck – on Niall, and he loses every betting game they play after that.

Causing bad luck is surprisingly easy, and unfortunately for everyone around Louis, he practices it as often as he can. Louis just has to prepare by drawing out a rune that Zayn had showed him, and reciting a hex in advance. Then, once he is near someone, he just has to retrace the rune – either over the same paper he drew it on to start with or even just with his finger on his thigh. Zayn had said that once he got really good, he’d be able to simply imagine the rune in his mind and it would work.

It’s not that Louis wants to cause any of his siblings bad luck. It’s just that he thinks it’s really fucking cool that he can do so, and he doesn’t feel too guilty for testing it out on them. Thanks to Louis, Ernest and Doris both crash their bikes, Daisy loses her wallet, Phoebe’s phone falls in the toilet, and Lottie burns off part of her hair when trying to curl it.

“We need to have a talk about consequences,” Zayn tells Louis, but he looks more amused than stern.

“I’m getting really good at it!” Louis tells him. “I think soon I’ll be able to do it mentally.”

“And that’s great news,” Zayn says. “But these moves are meant to be practiced on Harry, remember? You only have one person to target with chaos right now, and it’s not anyone in this household.”

Louis sighs. “I don’t want to start being around Harry already. I have no reason to.”

“Then make a reason,” Zayn instructs. “Either that, or I’ll cause the tour to be moved up and you’ll have to miss Christmas with your family.”

Louis makes a face. He doesn’t really care too much about missing Christmas, but he knows his family would miss him terribly if he wasn’t there. Plus, Fizzy will be coming to visit and the last time he saw her, she was recovering from a near-death experience.

“Your birthday is coming up, isn’t it?” Zayn asks. “Throw a party. Invite Harry. Practice on him.”

“I’m living with two five-year olds,” Louis reminds him. “I can’t just throw a party here.”

“Get Harry to throw you a party, then,” Zayn says.

“How the fuck am I supposed to get Harry to throw me a party?”

Zayn shrugs. “Manipulating people into getting your way is part of the job, Louis. Someday you’ll be manipulating people into giving you their souls. What better practice than manipulating someone into throwing you a party?”

-

As it turns out, Harry is very easily manipulated. Or maybe being soulless has made Louis really good at manipulating. Whatever the reason, it’s not hard at all for Louis to get Harry to throw him a party. All it took was a coffeeshop meet-up under the guise of discussing their musical vision for tour, an offhand mention of his birthday coming up, and some vague lamenting about missing LA since he would have been able to party it up. Hook, line, and sinker – Harry took the bait.

Louis almost felt bad at how eagerly Harry had said, “I can throw you a birthday party! It’ll put any party in LA to shame.” Almost.

And the thing is, Harry really knows how to throw a house party.

“He did this for you?” Lottie asks as they walk into the Styles’ house, the first time either of them have crossed through that doorway in a decade.

Louis nods, feeling vaguely flattered. It clearly took a lot of effort and planning. The entire house is decorated, balloons, streamers, and the words ‘happy birthday’ hung all around. There is plenty of food and drink, and it seems that Harry has even hired an actual bartender who is using their kitchen counter as a makeshift bar. Some pulsing, poppy music is playing and there are more young people packed into the house than Louis knew even lived in their town.

“Huh,” Lottie says, shaking her head. “Maybe there’s some good in him after all. I hope so, for your sake.” She gives him a nudge towards where Harry has caught sight of them, then slips off to the kitchen.

“There’s the birthday boy!” Harry calls out as he makes his way through the crowd. There’s a cone shaped party hat balanced precariously atop his curls and a noisemaker between his lips. “Happy birthday!”

“Thanks, Harry,” Louis says, so caught off guard that he forgets to try mentally casting the bad luck rune.

“Mum’s going to throw a fit when she sees I’ve taken down all her Christmas decorations,” Harry says with a laugh, shrugging. “I just wanted it to feel like today was only about your birthday, you know?”

Louis blinks in surprise, suddenly reminded of how he and Harry had spent nearly every one of their birthdays together as kids, and how every year on Louis’ birthday there were always Christmas decorations all around. Louis had been secretly jealous of Harry for having a day that was truly just about him, but he doesn’t remember ever telling him that.

“So,” Harry says, but he doesn’t follow it up with anything to fill the silence.

Louis doesn’t know what to say, other than to thank him profusely for his thoughtfulness. But he’s a demon in training and surely that’s not something he ought to be doing. Instead, Louis tries his mental rune, picturing the line formations in his mind.

It takes a moment, quiet save for the music playing in the background, but then it works. Someone bumps into Harry, hard, and Harry goes stumbling to the side, somehow managing to fall face first into a birthday cake that Louis hadn’t even noticed before.

A laugh is ripped out of Louis, a bubble of what feels like joy bursting inside of him as he laughs. Harry rights himself, face covered in frosting, and when their eyes meet he bursts out laughing, too.

Louis tries to tell himself that it’s a mean laugh, that he’s laughing at Harry for falling so hilariously into the cake, but it doesn’t feel mean. It feels like he and Harry are friends again. For a split-second Louis feels a connection of friendship, a connection that he thought he had lost the ability to feel. And that... that can’t be, can it? Besides, he and Harry aren’t friends.

“You’ve got a little something on your face,” Louis jokes, any ice between them sufficiently broken.

“Oh, right,” Harry says, grinning, swiping his thumb over just a small part of his cheek. “Did I get it?”

There’s still cake all over his face, which surely he can feel. Louis grins. “You got it.”

“Really, though,” Harry says, once they’ve calmed down and he has cleaned himself up with many napkins, “sorry about ruining your cake.”

“Don’t be,” Louis tells him.

“Did you want to dance?” Harry asks, motioning to the living room.

Louis used to love dancing. But lately, he can’t feel the music the way that he used to. “I’ll pass,” Louis says. “Gonna go find Lottie. You have fun though.”

Harry looks disappointed, but nods and heads to the living room anyways. It doesn’t even take another bad luck curse to ruin his dance moves – they're bad enough as is.

And if the next morning, Louis sees the Christmas decorations back in place at the Styles’ house and feels a pang in his heart, no one has to know.

-

“Minor inconveniences,” Zayn says wisely, “are where you can let your creativity shine.”

They’re at Louis’ favorite coffeeshop, though he is drinking tea himself. It’s a small place, just down the road from the main shopping centre. At this time of day, just before noon, it’s bustling with people squeezing in their morning coffee or indulging in a fancy sandwich for lunch.

“You might think at first that being able to influence someone’s luck is more powerful than being able to cause them a minor inconvenience,” Zayn says. “That’s because often, the effect of bad luck can be much greater than the effect of a minor inconvenience. For example, when you curse someone with bad luck, they might forget to leave the stove on and have their house burned down because of it.”

Louis nods. “Like Ernest and Doris’ bike crash. They could have been unlucky and gotten hit by something much worse than each other.”

“Exactly,” Zayn says. “Which is part of why I told you to stop practicing on your family.”

Louis winces. He knows better now, and hasn’t caused anyone bad luck recently other than Harry.

“But the reason that giving someone bad luck is easier than causing them a minor inconvenience, is because of the level of control you have to have,” Zayn explains. “With bad luck, you have no idea what is going to happen to that person. You know it won’t be good, but it could be anything from stubbing their toe on a table to being struck by a freak bolt of lightning. It’s totally out of your control. But minor inconveniences...”

Zayn pauses, and then suddenly there is a chorus of blaring noises as every single phone in the coffeeshop starts playing an alarm. Louis looks down at his own phone on the table, the words ‘minor inconvenience’ displayed as the name of his alarm.

“No way,” Louis says, stopping the alarm.

Around him, at various speeds, the other coffeeshop patrons also turn off their alarms, looking around in confusion. One old man at the far back table still has his alarm going off, and after another minute of letting it ring, Zayn makes a motion with his hand and that alarm stops as well.

“Minor inconveniences are precise,” Zayn says, his point having been demonstrated already. “You plan exactly what you want to happen, and then you execute it. There’s no chance, unless you want to throw in a clause so your inconvenience only happens some of the time. For instance, you could make Harry slip onstage 20% of the time that he tries to cross from one side to the other. Since it’s not every time, he is less likely to catch on that something is up and change his behavior to avoid it.”

“Awesome,” Louis says, his mind already racing through possible minor inconveniences that he can cause Harry. “How do I do it?”

“Remember the bad luck rune that I taught you? That actually means bad luck, in an ancient language,” Zayn explains. “But for this, you’ll need what we call sigils. These are more flexible, a symbol made from a base intent.”

“So I make the symbol myself?” Louis asks.

“You’ll have more creative liberty once you gain an intuition for making sigils, but for now there’s a standard way that beginners do it,” Zayn says, instructing, “Focus on what you want to happen, really focus. And while you’re thinking about it, write out what it is, like: trousers fall down when he stands up.” Zayn takes a napkin, pulling a marker out of nowhere and jotting down the sentence. “Cross out all the vowels,” Zayn says as he does so, “and match each letter to a number from 0 to 9.”

Louis nods, watching intently as Zayn sketches out a key to convert each letter of the alphabet to a number. Then, he writes the numbers in a circle, in what seems to be a random order.

“Make a number circle,” Zayn says, “order doesn’t matter. And in fact, don’t do it in order because you’re a budding agent of chaos. Then you just connect the numbers.”

Zayn draws out a symbol by connecting the numbers in order of the sentence he converted. The resulting symbol looks deliberate and badass. Louis can’t help but be impressed.

“Learn the symbol, and trace over it when you want to cast it. That’s all there is to it.” Zayn shrugs. “That should be plenty for you to practice as tour starts.”

“Plenty,” Louis agrees as he finishes his tea, tilting his cup back all the way. “Thanks, man.”

“Did you have any questions?” Zayn asks, downing the rest of his drink as well. “No? Let’s get going then.”

“Sure, let’s go.” Louis stands up. His trousers fall down.

Zayn laughs, tossing him the napkin with the sigil on it. “Pretty great, right?”

“Yeah,” Louis mutters, face heating as he rushes to pull his pants back up. “Great.”

-

The day that they leave for tour, Harry is late.

Louis isn’t surprised by this, because he had cast a sigil on Harry at their pre-tour planning meeting so that he would be anywhere from ten minutes to an hour late to everything. He had thought it was evil genius, since adding a bit of randomness to the times meant that people would be more annoyed at having to wait for him. If he was always twenty minutes late, then people would just adjust. What Louis hadn’t accounted for, however, was the reason that Harry would be late.

“Sorry I’m late, everyone!” Harry calls out to the entire crew, twenty-five minutes after they were supposed to leave. “I got us all coffee to start off the day right.”

And sure enough, there’s what must be the largest group order of coffee, ever, in the back of his car. He pulls out cups one by one, calling out each crew member’s name and handing them their drink. The drinks are all varied, as if Harry knows each member’s order.

“Louis!” Harry calls out, holding up a hot drink cup.

Louis raises an eyebrow, not having expected to be included, and makes his way over to Harry.

“Yorkshire tea, right?” Harry asks, an unbearably hopeful look on his face. “Milk, no sugar.”

Louis considers lying, just to see Harry crumple. But if Harry getting everyone’s drink is going to be a thing, he doesn’t want to condemn himself to bad tea for the rest of tour. “Yeah,” he says, nodding. “I can’t believe you remembered that.”

A small smile appears on Harry’s lips. “Of course I remembered, Lou.”

“Don’t call me that,” Louis says sharply.

Harry shrugs, the smile on his face not fading.

Louis turns around, tea in hand, and nearly walks right into the next crew member in line - who he recognizes, although he shouldn’t recognize anyone on Harry’s team other than Niall.

“Hey,” Louis says, “I know you.”

“Do you?” the man asks, a perfectly innocent smile on his face. He has wavy brown hair and glasses, and he looks exactly the same as he did when Louis first saw him in the alley by the hospital.

“Yes,” Louis insists. “You were-”

“Let’s catch up on the bus then!” the man says, accepting a latte from Harry and then grabbing Louis by the arm, dragging him away. “So,” he says cheerfully, once they’ve put some distance between themselves and anyone who might be curious about their conversation, “you’re Zayn’s protégé, hm?”

“I-” Louis blinks, not sure that Zayn would agree with that. “I suppose? I’m his latest conquest, more like.”

“Sure, of course you are,” the man says placatingly. “But let’s be real, you’re not like poor bastards whose souls he usually gets.”

“What does that even mean? And while we’re at it, who even are you?”

“Sorry, how rude of me. I’m Liam,” he says, extending a hand to shake. “I’m Zayn’s counterpart.”

“And what does that mean?”

“I’m an angel,” Liam says candidly. “It’s my job to make sure he isn’t causing too much trouble and fix things if it gets out of hand.”

“Oh,” Louis frowns, “so you’re on tour with Harry to prevent me from causing too much trouble, you mean?”

“Not at all,” Liam shakes his head, smiling brightly. “I have no intention of interfering with your training. I’m only here because I’m interested in you.”

“Me? What’s so interesting about me?”

“Your soul is the purest that Zayn has ever come by. You’ve got a bit of a mischievous streak, sure, but at your core, you are a _good_ person. Well, you used to be, anyway.” Liam waves a hand. “Technicalities.”

“I thought angels were supposed to save souls. It’s a bit late for me, innit?” Louis chuckles.

“Perhaps,” Liam says carefully, tilting his head, “but perhaps not.”

The look on his face is so serious that Louis’ amusement dies down.

“I’ve got a theory about you,” Liam tells him. “I can’t tell you about it yet, of course, since it’s best to let these things happen naturally, but if it works... well, we’ll see. I wouldn’t want to get your hopes up for nothing.”

Louis narrows his eyes. “Tell me,” he insists. “I mean, you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important, right?”

“Actually,” Liam says, brown eyes twinkling, “I’m here because it turns out that I have the voice of an angel.”

There’s a burst of laughter from behind them, and Louis turns to see Niall and Harry chatting amiably nearby. They’re too close to Louis and Liam for them to continue talking so openly about angels and demons and souls, so Louis groans.

“Tell me later?” he asks, immensely curious to know what Liam’s theory about him is. As cool as being a demon in training is, if there’s an option for Louis to not be soulless, he’ll definitely take it.

“I’ll tell you when the time is right,” Liam assures him cryptically. “But for now,” he motions to the tour bus in front of them, “let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”

-

The thing about being on the road with Harry is that Harry is everywhere, all the time. Louis sees him on the bus, in the hallways, in the dressing room, before shows, after shows – everywhere. In the rare times when Louis hasn’t seen Harry around for a while, his face is still plastered all over for advertising, his album cover lit up on every venue they go to, his name falling from someone’s lips in a nearby conversation. Louis knew that Harry had made it big, but he hadn’t realized just how big.

The upside to this is that Louis is around Harry frequently enough to cast a wide variety of minor inconveniences on him. He is also around Harry frequently enough to see his own work in action. Unfortunately, there’s a catch. Harry must be the most goddamn patient, optimistic, and well-liked person in the world.

Louis had started off with minor inconveniences that would affect Harry onstage, like making him trip and fall regularly while dancing, forget his own lyrics, and have inconvenient voice cracks. None of this seems to faze Harry, and his fans even embrace it. They fondly tease him online for falling, posting funny videos and calling him nicknames like ‘Bambi’. They fill in the lyrics he forgets, the entire audience belting the words out with their whole chest. They swoon over his voice cracks, commenting on how ‘raw’ and ‘real’ it makes his shows.

So Louis moves on to other things that are inconvenient. Harry is no longer able to take a shower without the water either going unexpectedly cold or losing all pressure in the middle. He is always either too hot or too cold while sleeping, loses his phone constantly, and is much more prone to accidentally breaking things. When he drops something, it always lands in the least convenient spot – wedged in a hard to reach place or an electronic device in water, etc.

And still, Harry is as cheerful as ever. He laughs off the inconveniences as they come, though Louis does overhear him confessing that he has been having fitful nights and weird showers when Niall presses that something about him seems off.

So it seems that Louis needs to escalate again. And that’s when he makes a crucial mistake.

It’s just after Louis has finished opening for Harry in Paris, and he is standing in the wings watching as Harry gets his show started. His heart is pounding with what Louis assumes would be a very pleasurable post-performance high, if he were able to really feel it. As it is, all he feels is a bit of an adrenaline rush and satisfaction at having done his set well. Another perk of not feeling much is a lack of the crippling pre-show jitters that Louis used to get before any performance. Without nerves holding him back, Louis has consistently smashed his opening set. If he weren’t so focused on getting a rise out of Harry, he’d be on top of the world.

“You look frustrated,” Liam comments, coming to stand by his side and watch as Harry begins to sing his first song.

While on tour, Liam and Louis have become fast friends. There’s a bond that comes with being not-quite-human, and they get along fantastically. Louis is convinced he even brings out the mischievous side in Liam. And for his part, Liam stays out of Louis’ demon business – well, mostly. (He did once beg Louis to reconsider the inconvenience of a songwriting block since Liam’s excuse for being on tour was to help brainstorm lyrics. If Harry was blocked, their songwriting sessions would take hours, Liam said. Hours.)

“I am,” Louis admits. He glances around to see if anyone will overhear their conversation, and sees Niall standing just a short distance away, looking stressed. “There’s just some goals I’ve had since the start of tour that I still haven’t managed to meet, you know?” he says, deliberately vague. “I think I’ve got to up my game, but I’m not sure how.”

Liam nods, surprisingly sympathetic for an angel who should generally be against Louis’ goals on principle. But before he can respond, Niall cuts in:

“Want to talk about frustrated? I’m about to have to sell an arm and a leg to get this footage of Harry’s interview pulled,” he complains.

“What’s wrong with his interview?” Louis asks curiously, his mind racing to potential future inconveniences: mixing up words, saying the least sensitive thing, making inappropriate innuendos. Louis is sure there are dozens more options.

Niall makes a face. “Popped a stiffy in the middle. If this goes live, it’ll be a PR nightmare.”

Louis raises his eyebrows, giving Liam a look.

Liam’s eyes are already on him, a warning being glared back at him.

“An inconvenient boner, huh?” Louis asks, with absolutely no ill-intentions. “Sounds embarrassing.”

“Yeah,” Niall chuckles, lifting up his phone. “Oh, thank god. It’s the interview tech calling. I’ve got to take this, but you lads enjoy the rest of the show.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Liam asks warily.

His attitude only eggs Louis on. “It’s a great idea, Li. Just you wait.”

And in some ways, they’re both right.

-

“Louis, what are you wearing?” Niall hollers at him as they pass each other in the hotel hall, Louis walking leisurely towards the lobby and Niall jogging as quickly as he can in flip-flops.

Louis looks down at his outfit, the same tracksuit he was wearing when they disembarked the bus. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s not a swimsuit!” Niall answers from down the hall. “Go get changed! Pool party out back. You’d better be there!”

It’s not like Louis has anything better to do than lounge in bed and watch cable tv, so he does as Niall says. Besides, a pool party sounds fun.

After changing, Louis runs into Liam on his way to the pool and promptly bursts out laughing.

“Li,” he says fondly, “is this your first ever pool party?”

Liam’s lips make a surprised ‘o’. “How did you know?”

In addition to swim trunks, he’s wearing rubber fins on his feet and a snorkeling mask. Louis grins. “I think you’re going to be disappointed with the amount of swimming that actually happens at a pool party.”

“Really?” Liam asks, sounding dejected already.

“It’s mostly hanging out near the pool and eating snacks,” Louis tells him, looping an arm around his shoulder and guiding him towards the pool.

Sure enough, most of Harry’s team is lounging next to the pool rather than swimming in it. The closest that anyone actually is to being in the pool is sitting on the edge with their legs in the water as they sip on drinks. Someone, presumably Niall, has set up a long table of food and beers and a speaker which is blasting what sounds like the top 40 pop songs.

“Aw man, you were right,” Liam grumbles, taking off his snorkeling mask.

“C’mon, we’ll swim anyways,” Louis assures him. “Follow me.” And then he pulls away from Liam, running past the sign that clearly says ‘no running in the pool area’ and yells out, “Cannonball!” as he leaps into the water. There are some scandalized shrieks from people he has splashed who apparently did not intend on getting wet at a pool party, and Louis comes up for air grinning, flicking his hair out of his eyes.

“Louis,” Liam scolds, standing next to edge of the pool, clutching his snorkeling mask and towel close to him. “That was rude of you.”

Louis rolls his eyes. “Guess I’m just a soulless asshole, huh?”

Liam gives him a stern look.

“C’mon, get in here before I pull you in,” Louis says.

“Or I push you in!” Niall yells out from behind Liam, running towards the water and jumping in, too, grabbing Liam’s arm to take him down with him.

Niall comes up laughing wildly, and Liam comes up spluttering for air. Niall gives the two of them a friendly splash, then swims suavely over to where a group of girls are lounging near the pool in their bikinis.

“The water… it’s so chemical,” Liam says, making a face.

Louis’ eyes widen, and he turns away from where Niall is starting to turn on the charm. “Liam… is this the first time you’ve been in a pool?”

“What business does an angel have in a pool?” Liam hisses. “Of course it’s my first time being in a pool.”

“Can you even swim?” Louis asks, suddenly alarmed. He surges towards Liam in case he needs help, but finds that the angel is successfully treading water. “I don’t think Zayn can swim,” Louis comments thoughtfully.

“He can swim,” Liam says, shaking his head. “He just doesn’t like water. Got holy water spritzed on him one too many times, I guess.”

“That’ll do it,” Louis says, chuckling. “Someday that’ll be me.”

“Perhaps,” Liam says.

Then, Louis realizes that if Liam has never been in a pool, he has probably missed out on all the classic pool games. He ropes Niall and the girl he is currently wooing to take them on in a game of chicken, and after rounds up the remaining partygoers for a huge game of Marco Polo.

It takes a while, but eventually, laughing alongside Liam and Niall in the water, Louis notices what a good time he is having. Almost immediately, he also notices Harry’s absence.

“Hey, Niall,” Louis says, pushing himself out of the water at the side of the pool and making his way over to where Niall is getting another beer. “Where’s Harry? Isn’t this his pool party?”

Niall scoffs, taking a swig from his bottle and offering another to Louis. “He bailed. He’s been hiding in the sauna this entire time, god knows why. Refused to come out, even when I bribed him with food and alcohol.”

“He’s been in the sauna this whole time?” Louis asks, incredulous. “It’s been like four hours.”

“You want to make sure he’s not baked like a Christmas turkey?” Niall asks, shaking his head. “You go talk to him. I’ve tried, and all I got for my troubles was told off.”

And that’s when Louis makes his next mistake.

It’s not that he cares about Harry. It’s just that Louis has been trying to upset Harry for weeks now and hasn’t managed to make him crack. Now, something has finally made Harry miserable, but as far as Louis can tell, it has nothing to do with him. After all, he never cast any sigils on Harry to make him unable to swim or a party-pooper. So as far as Zayn or Liam is concerned, Louis just wants to know what finally got to Harry. Armed with that knowledge, he will be able to more effectively annoy him with minor inconveniences. It’s _research_.

So that’s why Louis makes his way over to the sauna, tucked away from the dwindling pool party, and bangs on the door.

“Is everyone gone yet?” Harry’s voice comes in response, sounding pitiful.

“Not quite,” Louis answers honestly, glancing around. Most of the team have gone back to their rooms, but there are a few stragglers still hanging around the pool eating snacks.

There’s a crash from within the sauna, as if Harry has suddenly flailed around. “Louis?” he asks. “I thought you were Niall.”

“Niall gave up on you,” Louis tells him, trying the door handle. It’s locked. “Said it was up to me to make sure you weren’t baked like a Christmas turkey.”

Harry heaves a sigh. After a long moment, the door clicks.

Louis slides it open, eyebrows raising at the sight of Harry laying on the sole sauna bench, arms behind his head and eyes resolutely focused on the ceiling. “Are you… okay?” Louis asks tentatively, his mouth going dry.

Louis had forgotten just how fit Harry is. But seeing him like this, his torso and legs exposed, his biceps bulging, his tattoos swirling over his glistening muscles, it’s difficult to remember why Louis should hate him and not sleep with him.

Then Harry says, “Look at my dick,” and it gets even more difficult.

“I- sorry?” Louis stammers, though his eyes do dart downwards before he can stop himself.

“I’ve been hard for _days_ , I think,” Harry explains. “I’ll wank, and it will go away for a while, and then it’ll be back in full force. I swear I’ve never had a boner last this long before, but it’s like I just can’t be satisfied right now. I need to have sex or something, but I’m not the type to hook up with someone random and I don’t want to get that reputation just because I can’t keep it in my pants. It won’t go away, though. I look obscene.”

That last part at least, Louis can agree with. Harry’s dick is tenting the front of his swim trunks massively.

“Um,” Louis says, forcing his eyes back up to Harry’s face. At least he can report back to Zayn that he has successfully gotten to Harry. He hadn’t expected inconvenient boners to be the hex that made Harry crack, but then again he hadn’t expect inconvenient boners to mean a constant boner either.

“Sorry,” Harry says when Louis fails to say anything else, covering his face with his hands. “That was too much information, I’m sure. And horribly inappropriate of me.”

“It’s fine,” Louis says quickly. “You’ve got, uh, quite the predicament.”

“I just need to get some sleep,” Harry says, shaking his head. “I haven’t been sleeping well. Or maybe I just need a cold shower, though my shower has been acting really strange. I’ll figure it out, I guess.”

Louis thinks he should feel a sort of pride or pleasure out of knowing that Harry is suffering, and all due to minor inconveniences of his own design. But instead, he just feels bad for him. “I could help you, if you wanted,” Louis offers. He’s not sure how to reverse a minor inconvenience, but surely there’s a way. He is the one who caused it in the first place, after all.

It’s not until Harry’s eyes travel up his body, wide and lustful, that Louis realizes it sounds like he just offered to help get Harry off. “You… you would?” Harry asks, his eyes settling on Louis’ face, filled with both want and appreciation.

“ _Oh_. Oh, no,” Louis blurts, taking a hasty step backwards that slams his back against the door. “No, sorry, that’s- I see how that could be misunderstood. That’s not what I meant.”

Harry’s brow furrows slightly in confusion.

“Sorry, I meant-” Louis hesitates. How does one say, ‘I meant to offer to reverse the sigils I’ve cast on you as a demon in training, but I realize now it sounds like I offered to suck your dick’? Louis shakes his head, fumbling for the door. “Nevermind, sorry!” He stammers, flinging the door open and rushing out, bright red. He goes straight to his room, not even stopping when he sees Niall and Liam exchange a conspiratorial glance.

-

Needless to say, things are awkward after that.

Louis still sees Harry everywhere, but neither of them knows what to say to the other. They exchange a quick hello, maybe a wave or a nervous smile, and then go their separate ways.

To make matters worse, Zayn seems to be avoiding Louis. Usually, he would check in on Louis unbidden, offering pointers and hanging out to laugh at stories of how Louis was trying to inconvenience Harry. But Zayn hasn’t popped in for a visit for weeks now, and Louis is desperately in need of his guidance. Louis doesn’t know how to summon Zayn, and Google tells him repeatedly that in order to summon a demon you have to be exuding a desire so strong that you would sell your soul for it. This doesn’t really apply to Louis because his desire to help Harry with his boners is certainly not that strong, and he doesn’t have a soul to sell anymore anyways.

So instead of asking his mentor to teach him how to reverse a minor inconvenience, Louis attempts it on his own. He tries a sigil for no more inconvenient boners, a sigil for boners to not last long, and even a sigil for no inconveniences at all.

Since he and Harry are barely speaking anymore, it would be foolish to think that Harry would update him once his problem has been resolved. So, Louis has to check himself in order to figure out if his latest cancellation sigil has had any effect. This means Louis is often staring at Harry’s crotch, and Harry occasionally catches him doing so.

It’s all horrendously awkward, and after three failed cancellation sigil attempts, Louis gives up.

“Liam!” he yells, banging repeatedly on the angel’s hotel room door.

“I’m a little busy in here, come back later!” Liam’s voice comes muffled from inside the room.

“It’ll be fast! It’s important,” Louis yells back.

There are some hushed voices, some grumbling, and then Liam wrenches his hotel room door open, dressed in a hotel bathrobe and nothing else. He’s frowning, but he’s also glowing. He looks suspiciously well-fucked for an angel.

“Oh my god,” Louis says, gleeful. “Li, with all due respect, you look like you just had a fantastic lay. Are you even allowed to do that? Isn’t that like… sinful?”

Liam looks cross, but there’s an amused snort from inside the room.

“A fantastic lay who’s still here,” Louis notes, grinning. “Well, listen, sorry to have pulled you away but now that I’ve got you, I’ll only take a second. Do you know how I can get in contact with Zayn? I really need to talk to him.”

There’s a full-on laugh from inside the room at that, and Louis looks over Liam’s shoulder to see none other than Zayn himself lounging on Liam’s king-sized bed.

“Zayn?” Louis splutters in surprise, eyes bugging out. He rounds on Liam. “Okay, _angel_ , you definitely are not supposed to be doing that.”

“We’re dating,” Liam defends shyly. Zayn smiles softly in the background, and yeah, Louis can see it.

“Good for you, you make a great couple, and I hope you don’t get eternal damnation, whatever,” Louis says, brushing the news aside to add threateningly, “But if he hasn’t been coaching me because he’s been busy having sex with you…”

“Relax,” Zayn calls from the bed. “You don’t want my help anyways. You’re trying to reverse something you caused, right?”

“Right,” Louis agrees slowly.

“So,” Zayn continues, “who do you think reverses things that demons do?”

Louis’ eyes snap back to Liam. “Angels!”

“Exactly,” Zayn nods, grinning. “Anyways, let me have another round with Liam and then I’ll let you steal him away, yeah?”

“Ugh, take your time.” Louis makes a face, waving them both off. “Thanks for your help I guess,” he mutters, retreating back to his room.

In the hallway in front of his room, Louis runs into Harry. He is standing in front of Louis’ door and does indeed have a noticeable bulge in the front of his pants.

“Hey, Louis,” Harry says, which is perfectly normal and entirely all that Louis expects him to say. But then, he follows up with, “Can we talk?”

Louis blinks. “Sure?” he says, though it comes out rather uncertain. “Come in, I guess.”

If anyone asks, Louis inviting Harry inside is purely selfish. Their talk is sure to involve their awkward sauna encounter, and Louis doesn’t want anyone to overhear that. It has nothing to do with consideration for Harry, just his own comfort.

“Look, Harry,” Louis starts off, pausing to close the door behind them. He thinks it’s important that he gets the upper hand in the conversation from the get-go, so things don’t get out of control.

Harry looks particularly good today, his hair styled to swoop away from his forehead and his lips even more sinfully red than usual. Not that Louis has been paying attention, of course. Even though as a demon in training Louis doubts his moral compass matters anymore, he still thinks it would be frowned upon if he were to drop to his knees and unzip Harry’s pants right here, which he very much would like to do and very likely still might if he doesn’t get control of this conversation right away.

Harry raises an eyebrow.

Louis swallows. “There’s really nothing to talk about, you know? We’re adults. We’re professionals. We can navigate this.”

“Navigate what?” Harry asks, stepping forward and crowding into Louis’ space.

Louis takes a step backwards in response, his back hitting the door. It feels awfully familiar, up against the door in a tense moment with Harry, only this time Harry hasn’t left him enough space to open the door and make his escape if need be.

“Our conversation in the sauna,” Louis replies, forcing his voice to stay level even as Harry sidles closer.

“Oh,” Harry murmurs softly. “I thought you were going to say the sexual tension between us.”

Louis scoffs. “There’s not-” he starts.

“Really?” Harry interrupts, smirking. “As if I haven’t noticed you checking me out every time we see each other.”

Louis feels his cheeks heating. It sounds flimsy to his own ears as he says, “I just wanted to see if your… problem had gotten better.”

“Ah,” Harry says lowly, clearly not believing him. Louis doesn’t blame him. He doesn’t fully believe himself either. “Well you’ll be glad to hear that it has gotten better, actually. Although I could use some help, if your offer is still on the table. See, I’m not hard all the time anymore. Just when you’re around.”

Louis flounders for a moment, at a loss for words. He hadn’t tried a sigil which would only cause Harry an inconvenient boner when he is around. Maybe it’s part of his original sigil, and it just happens to be inconvenient when Louis is around.

“It seems like you’ve got a bit of a problem yourself,” Harry comments with a significant glance downwards. “If you want, I’ll make you a similar offer.”

Sure enough, Louis is hardening rapidly in his sweatpants. 

“So, what do you say?” Harry asks, clearly waiting for permission. He looks eager and confident, sure that Louis is about to give in.

And he’s right. Louis wants this. Louis wants _him_.

That last bit is concerning if Louis thinks about it too hard. It’s not just sex that Louis is craving, it’s Harry. And to make matter worse, Louis wants Harry more than he has wanted anything in months.

“Yes,” Louis breathes, officially giving in. Instead of dashing out the door like he did in the sauna, this time Louis surges forward, loops his arms around Harry’s neck, and pulls them both back against the door with their lips locked.

And then Louis feels it. It’s not a full show of fireworks, but it’s definitely a spark.

It startles Louis, because he _feels something_ in a way that he hasn’t since he sold his soul. This isn’t a physical sensation nor a negative emotion. He feels it within him, and it feels right.

Harry doesn’t seem to notice, bringing a hand to cup Louis’ cheek and kissing him deeply.

Louis forces himself to not dwell on it, to just embrace the wonderful warmth that is filling him. After all, he can’t very well ask Harry to stop so he can analyze whether his cold, soulless heart has actually begun to feel something.

He does at least slow things down, placing a hand on Harry’s waist to still his grinding hips and changing the tempo of their kiss from sloppy and searing to tender and intimate. Harry makes a soft noise of approval at the change, his body melting into Louis’.

“Bed?” Harry asks, having caught on to the fact that this is no longer a rushed hookup, a quick swapping of blowjobs by the door. When Louis emphatically agrees, Harry maneuvers them over to Louis’ bed, straddling him on the mattress and tugging his shirt over his head.

Then, Harry freezes.

“Alright?” Louis asks after a moment, seeing as Harry has gone still on top of him and doesn’t seem to be moving anytime soon.

In retrospect, the problem is that while Louis has never made any attempts to hide his inner arm tattoos, they aren’t usually too noticeable. With his arms above his head and his shirt off, however, the ink there really stands out.

“Your tattoo,” Harry says, bewilderment turning to accusation. Slowly, before Louis’ eyes, hurt creeps onto Harry’s face. “You said you didn’t have an ‘oops’ tattoo. You said we weren’t soulmates.”

“Shit,” Louis curses, sitting up as Harry moves to leave, getting off of Louis and collecting his things. “I didn’t mean to- Wait, Harry, please. It’s not that simple.”

“Oh, it’s complicated, is it?” Harry demands, angry tears pooling in his eyes. “You lied to me, Louis. You knew we were soulmates and you lied to me. There’s nothing complicated about that.”

Regret pools in Louis’ gut, accompanied by guilt and shame. “Harry, I’m sorry,” Louis pleads. “I should have told you.”

“Really?” Harry snaps. “If you could do it again, would you tell me?”

Louis hesitates. He doesn’t hate Harry properly anymore, but he did then. Plus, there’s still the issue of him literally not having a soul.

It’s the wrong move. Harry heaves a sigh, blinking away tears. “You know what the worst part is, Lou?” he says, anger replaced by resignation. “You’ve always been it for me. I had the biggest crush on you when we were kids, used to fantasize about how grand it would be if we were soulmates. And in some giant cosmic joke, the universe actually made us soulmates. But you hate me. You’ve hated me for years and I have no idea why.”

“No idea why?” Louis snarls, surprised at how earnest Harry looks when their eyes meet. “You changed when you made it big, Harry. Stopped calling, stopped visiting, stopped caring.”

“It was _busy_ ,” Harry defends. “I was being overworked by my label then, and I was so new to the industry that I felt like there was nothing I could do but go along with it.”

“You didn’t even come when Jay died,” Louis says quietly.

“I was on tour,” Harry says, and he does at least look remorseful. “I couldn’t cancel my shows for my childhood friend’s mother dying. You and I weren’t even talking at that point anyways. I sent flowers.”

“Anne sent flowers,” Louis corrects, biting.

“We thought it would be weird if her, Gemma, and I all sent our own flowers!” Harry explains. “It’s not that I didn’t care. She practically raised me. I did a campaign for donations to leukemia research in her honor.”

That makes Louis pause. “I didn’t know that,” he admits in a whisper.

“Yeah, well, maybe you’d know more about me if you’d bothered to give me another chance,” Harry mutters, walking to the door. “You don’t just get assigned a soulmate randomly, you know. It’s deliberate and meaningful. You can’t just decide you aren’t going to be my soulmate because you don’t like me.”

“It wasn’t just that,” Louis mumbles, looking down.

“When were you going to tell me?” Harry asks, pausing by the door. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

Louis bites his lip, refuses to meet Harry’s eyes.

It’s not an answer, but it is at the same time.

Harry scoffs, wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, and leaves.

As the door swings shut behind him, Louis feels more empty and sad than he can remember ever feeling before.

-

“Whoa,” Liam says, frowning in concern when Louis opens the door, eyes rimmed red. “I thought the dilemma was trying to get rid of Harry’s inconvenient boners. That’s fun. Funny. And a very easy fix. Why do you look like Clifford got run over repeatedly with a bulldozer?”

“Liam,” Louis whispers seriously, “I haven’t cried since Fizzy nearly died. I haven’t felt anything strongly enough to compel me to cry since Zayn took my soul. What’s wrong with me?”

Louis had expected sympathy from Liam, had expected him to wrap him up in a hug and tell him that even the most soulless demons cried sometimes. But Liam does not do this. Instead, slowly but surely, a bright smile spreads on his face.

“Louis,” he says excitedly, “tell me again why you wanted to reverse the inconvenient boners.”

Louis huffs, shaking his head. “It made him _miserable_ , Liam. Harry can be arrogant, stubborn, conceited, and a total asshole, but he can also be kind, caring, and thoughtful. I went too far with the boner sigil.”

“Too bad for him,” Liam shrugs. “Why does that make you want to reverse it?”

Louis furrows his eyebrows, confused at why Liam, an angel, isn’t getting this. “I felt bad for him, Liam. Plus, it was awkward as fuck for both of us.”

“Exactly!” Liam snaps his fingers, grinning. “You felt bad for him. Now tell me, Louis, when is the last time you felt bad for someone?”

Louis stills. He hadn’t thought about it like that before. He thinks hard, trying to remember any instance of guilt or regret before this. Even when he had been testing out bad luck on his siblings, Louis hadn’t felt bad for doing so. Ernest and Doris had crashed their bikes because of him, and Louis had simply shrugged it off. It wasn’t until Zayn warned him of the unpredictability and power of bad luck that he stopped using his siblings as guinea pigs. And even then, he had done so to prevent anything worse from happening, not out of remorse for what he had already done.

“Not since I sold my soul,” Louis answers finally, searching Liam’s eyes. “What does that mean?”

“It means your soul is growing back.”

For a moment, Louis is sure that Liam is joking. “Very funny, Liam,” Louis says sarcastically. “Souls don’t grow back. Pretty sure if they did, Zayn would be out of a job.”

“Normally, you’re right. A soul can’t regrow from nothing,” Liam agrees. “But souls do grow. So if there was any bit of soul left in you…”

Louis swallows hard, sinking down onto the bed to process this. “You’re saying that Zayn messed up and left a bit of soul in me? On accident?”

Liam nods, beaming. “Remember how I told you that your soul was one of the purest that Zayn had ever gotten? Everything about your soul was good, except for one corrupted part: the part of you that hated Harry.”

That makes an awful kind of sense to Louis. Before meeting Zayn, Louis had tried to avoid Harry because he felt like being around Harry made him a worse person. Thinking of Harry had filled him with jealousy, resentment, and bitterness. After Jay passed, his feelings had escalated to include anger and disgust. He had hated Harry.

“You don’t hate him anymore, do you?” Liam asks, gentle but knowing. “Not like you used to.”

“No,” Louis agrees quietly. “I guess I don’t.”

Liam smiles, taking one of his hands and squeezing it. “When Zayn sucked your soul, he only took the pure part. In his defense, almost all of your soul was so pure and blinding that it was easy to miss the small bit corrupted by your hatred for Harry. But now, you don’t hate Harry like before. That part of your soul is turning good again, and the parts that are now good are regrowing.”

“That’s why I’m feeling things again,” Louis says, amazed. Then, his face falls. “That’s why I felt a connection to Harry just now. I don’t have much of a soul, but what I do have knows that I’m Harry’s soulmate.”

“The universe works in mysterious ways,” Liam says.

Louis groans. “But Liam, I’ve already gone and fucked it up. Harry found out that we were soulmates from seeing my tattoo, and I couldn’t explain why I had lied about it.”

“Did Zayn ask you not to tell anyone about selling your soul?” Liam tilts his head to the side. “In my experience, word of mouth is great for drumming up business. You tell your neighbor how you sold your soul to save your sister, and the next time their loved one is in the hospital – Zayn’s getting summoned. Makes his work loads easier, if I’m honest.”

Louis gapes at Liam. “It’s not a secret?”

Liam shrugs. “It’s a bit taboo, I suppose. Not everyone believes angels or demons are real, and it’s certainly frowned upon to encourage the selling of souls, but it’s not a secret.”

“I have to tell Harry,” Louis says, leaping to his feet. He pauses just by the door, looking back at Liam. “Will it fully grow back, do you think?”

“It should,” Liam tells him. “And as more of your soul grows back, you’ll find your abilities fading. It’s a tradeoff. But I wouldn’t make any more deals with Zayn, if I were you. He won’t mess it up a second time.”

“Liam,” Louis bites his lip, fighting back a smile. “Thank you.”

For the first time in a long time, Louis feels hope.

-

On his way to Harry’s room, Louis bumps into Niall in the hall. He literally bumps into him, sending a stack of papers in his arms spiraling to the floor.

“Sorry, Niall,” Louis says hastily, dropping to the floor to help Niall pick them back up again.

“Don’t worry about it,” Niall says good-naturedly. “What’s the hurry?”

“I upset Harry earlier,” Louis tells him. “Gotta go make it right.”

“Good on you, mate,” Niall says. “I hope it works out. He’s always wanted a better relationship with you.”

“He…” Louis raises his eyebrows, handing the papers he has gathered back to Niall. “He what?”

“Yeah,” Niall chuckles. “Don’t tell him that I told ya, but I swear he’s been half in love with you ever since you two were kids.”

“Really.” Louis can’t imagine why. He always blames Harry’s asshole behavior on his rise to fame, but truthfully Louis had been just as awful to Harry in return.

Niall shrugs.

“Hey, Niall?” Louis asks as an afterthought.

Niall turns back to him expectantly. “Yeah?”

“You’ve worked with Harry for a long time. What sort of charity work does he do?”

“All sorts really. His manager will suggest a bunch of different high-profile causes and he can pick which one he wants to focus on.” Niall pauses thoughtfully for a moment, then adds, “There was one that was all his own idea, though. A leukemia fundraiser. I think he lost someone dear to him to it, because that one was really important to him. Didn’t get much media coverage or anything, but still raised a good amount of money.”

Louis swallows hard, nodding. “That’s… really nice of him.”

If Niall notices that Louis is affected by his answer, he doesn’t show it. “Well, Harry’s a good guy, you know? Liam is always calling him a pure soul, whatever that means.”

“Sounds like Liam,” Louis chuckles, shaking his head. “Anyways, thanks. I’ll see you around.”

Niall gives him a wave, and then continues on his way.

-

Harry doesn’t open the door when Louis knocks politely. He doesn’t open the door when Louis bangs loudly. He doesn’t even open the door when Louis calls out, “Harry, it’s me! Please, can we talk?”

He does, however, open the door when Louis calls out, “Harry, I sold my soul!”

“You what?” Harry asks as he flings open the door, looking distraught and confused.

“I didn’t tell you that we were soulmates because I sold my soul,” Louis says directly, wanting to make sure he got the words out in case Harry decides he’d rather slam the door in his face.

Harry doesn’t say anything, just chews on his lip as he processes the words and then stands back to let Louis inside.

Louis steps into Harry’s room, which is actually not nearly much larger or nicer than Louis’ own. He had expected Harry to get the fanciest hotel suite or something, but the main difference between their rooms is that Harry has a better view.

Louis takes a seat on the edge of Harry’s bed and starts talking, figuring that Harry wants an explanation. “I didn’t know that you’d done that fundraiser in Jay’s honor. All I knew was that you’d stopped texting, stopped calling, stopped visiting, and so I already thought you’d become a total wanker. Then when I didn’t hear from you after Jay passed, I thought you didn’t even care. It’s one thing to repeatedly miss birthday wishes or holiday visits, but Jay was like a mum to you too. Missing her funeral and not even saying anything, tacking your name onto some flowers… it really hurt.”

“I wanted to call. Or text. But we hadn’t in so long that I thought it would feel fake if out of nowhere I was suddenly offering condolences,” Harry says, looking pained.

Louis motions for him to wait, continuing, “And then Fizzy had a heart attack.”

“What?” Harry’s jaw drops. “Fiz? She’s what, nineteen?”

“Eighteen,” Louis corrects, nodding. “And she would have died from it, too. Except that a demon found me and offered me her life back in exchange for my soul.”

Harry’s face softens. “So you sold your soul.”

Louis nods. “And so when we met again, for the first time since turning eighteen, and you said ‘oops’ to me, I panicked. I didn’t feel anything, plus I hated you still so I didn’t want to be your soulmate. And to top it off, I didn’t have a soul anyways. How can you be soulmates if you don’t have a soul?”

“You should have told me,” Harry says, frowning.

“I should have told you,” Louis agrees. “I am sorry for that. I hadn’t told any of my siblings about selling my soul because I didn’t want them to feel bad about it, and so then I got it in my head that I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone.”

“But now…?” Harry asks hesitantly, raising his eyebrows.

“Now, it turns out my soul is growing back? I don’t really know how it all works, but that’s what I’ve been told,” Louis tells him. “I’ve started having feelings again, including feeling an inexplicable connection to you.”

“It’s not inexplicable,” Harry says, smiling now. He steps towards Louis, lacing their hands together. “It’s because we’re soulmates.”

“Yeah,” Louis breathes, “soulmates.”

“Does that mean I get to kiss you now?” Harry asks.

Louis smiles, nodding, and leans forwards to connect their lips in a sweet kiss.

“Does that mean that I also get to call you my boyfriend?” Harry asks after they’ve pulled back.

“Reckon we ought to go on a date first,” Louis teases.

“Fair enough,” Harry says. “Anything else you’d like to tell me before I officially ask you out on the best first date you’ve ever been on?”

“Oh. Actually, yeah,” Louis says. “All your sleeping, showering, and boner issues? Those were my fault.”

“ _What?_ ”

The perk of being boyfriends now, is that Louis can quiet him with a kiss.

-

Their first date goes wonderfully. They go out for dinner at a small local restaurant where the owner tucks them away at a table for two in the back, away from any fans who might recognize either of them. They spend most of the night talking, getting to know each other again and understanding the other’s perspective in the story that got them to this point. They reminisce about their childhoods, Harry tells Louis all about his experiences as a rising music star, and Louis tells Harry all he learned from being a demon in training. After a lovely meal, and with a newfound respect and understanding of each other, they head back to Harry’s hotel room where Louis begins to make up for some of those boners he had caused.

Louis lasts a week before calling Lottie to tell her about their relationship. He might have lasted longer, actually, if he and Harry hadn’t started getting overly sappy in their introductions of one another at Harry’s shows. Fans picked up that there might be something going on between the two of them, and Louis knew that Lottie would never forgive him if she found out from the internet rather than from him.

Louis gives her an abridged version, still leaving out the part where he sold his soul, but telling her all about Harry’s tribute to Jay and how they’ve reconciled and are somewhere along the path to falling in love. She is thrilled for him, relieved that Harry wasn’t as awful as they had thought, and immediately shares the news with the rest of their siblings. She doesn’t agree to reach out to Gemma just yet, but Louis and Harry are scheming to try to bring their friendship back together too.

Of course, Niall and Liam are overjoyed when they discover that Louis and Harry have worked things out. Liam keeps smiling at Louis like a proud parent might, and Niall won’t stop gaping at how badass it is that Louis almost became a demon. As it turns out, the only real downside to telling your friends that you sold your soul is that they never let you live it down. Niall and Harry have taken to calling Louis ‘soulless’ whenever he does anything vaguely bad, like driving too aggressively or not buying Girl Scout cookies from the troop outside the store.

Unlike Louis, Liam has managed to keep his mythical identity undercover. As far as anyone knows, he is an excellent songwriter and totally normal human. He does, however, give Louis regular, excited updates about his soul’s growth. It’s sweet of him to do so, but Louis doesn’t really need to be told. He can feel it.

With each day that goes by, Louis smiles a little wider, laughs a little louder, and holds Harry a little closer. And he knows that someday, his smiles will fully reach his eyes, his laughs will start at his belly, and he and Harry will be wholly, completely, perfectly in love.

He can feel it.

_Fin_.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading and i hope you enjoyed! as always, comments and kudos are very much appreciated. xx


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